NULS Explorer

This is an alternative Explorer for the NULS blockchain written in Python with AsyncIO and MongoDB bindings (using Motor).

Installation

You need to install the requirements, ideally in an empty virtualenv (I let that part to you):

$ python setup.py develop

You need a mongodb instance, either on localhost or elsewhere. A simple way to spawn up one is using docker:

$ docker run --name mongo -p 127.0.0.1:27017:27017 -d mongo

(using your distribution tools is perfectly fine too, like apt install mongodb mongodb-server)

Then, once it's installed, you need to copy the sample-config.yaml file elsewhere, and edit it to your liking (see configuration section).

To run NULSExplorer, run this command:

$ nulsexplorer -c config.yaml (where config.yaml is your configuration file you edited earlier)

Then, open your browser on http://localhost:8080 (assuming you didn't change the port), and you will have a basic explorer ready.

Configuration

The configuration file is a yaml formatted file, with those sections:

`explorer`

Defaults:

explorer:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 8080
  secret: "CHOOSE A SECRET DAMMIT"

You need to set a secret for the cookies. If you want to listen to the world, change 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0. You can also change the port the HTTP server is listening to.

`nuls`

Defaults:

nuls:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 6001
  path: /api/
  base_uri: "http://127.0.0.1:6001/api/"
  chain_id: 8964

This part is about your connection to the nuls client to retrieve the blocks and other informations about the nuls blockchain. Most of the arguments there are self-explaining, except chain_id.

chain_id is the chain you are addressing, NULS mainnet is 8964 for the Ns prefix. Other networks (like testnets or side chains) might have other chain_id. This will define the address that will be generated from a public key.

`mongodb`

mongodb:
  uri: "mongodb://127.0.0.1"
  database: nulsmain

This section explains to the mongodb driver how to access the database. The mongo db uri is in a standard format and supports usernames, password and ports (as well as other options, but please check the PyMongo doc for more information).

API Endpoints

There is a lot of API endpoints. Most of them not yet documented, I wil be happy to accept pull-request for that :-)

Basically, you can take any url you see navigating on the http interface and add .json at the end to get a JSON API endpoint.

aleph-im / nulsexplorer